day, at a cost which never exceeded a silbergroschen, about three halfpence. His services as a scientific philologer, were of great value. He was the first to observe and cultivate the true relations of the monosyllabic languages of Southern Asia, and to place them at the head of his scheme of the Asiatic and European languages. He may be looked upon also as the founder of the theory of the geographical distribution of languages, and the science of glossography. He was the first to systematize and trace the origin and affiliations of the various alphabetical characters, and his researches in the history of the palæography of the Semitic languages may be said to have exhausted the subject. He died at Jena on the 8th October, 1801.—J. F. W.
BUTLER, Alban, second son of Simon Butler, Esq. of Appletree, county of Northampton, was born about the year 1710, and educated at the English college, Douay, where he became professor of philosophy. His first publication was a series of letters on "The History of the Popes." Having been ordained a priest, he travelled through France and Italy with the earl of Shrewsbury, and was appointed to the pastoral charge of a mission in Staffordshire, and subsequently became chaplain to the duke of Norfolk. He went abroad as tutor to the duke's nephew and heir-presumptive, and whilst resident in that capacity at Paris he completed his "Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and other Saints," arranged for every day throughout the year. This work is still of standard authority among the Roman catholic communion, and earned the praise of Bishop Lowth, and even of Gibbon. He afterwards became president of the English college at St. Omer's, and vicar-general to the bishops of Arras, Ypres, St. Omer's, and Boulogne. He died at his college May 15th, 1773, aged sixty-three.—E. W.
BUTLER, Charles, an eminent scholar, grammarian, and writer on music, was born at Wycomb in Buckinghamshire in 1559. He entered a student of Magdalen hall, Oxford, in 1579, and shortly afterwards took the degree of M.A. Upon leaving the university he became master of the free school at Basingstoke, Hants, and subsequently vicar of Wootton St. Lawrence, in the same county—"A poor preferment, God wot," says honest Anthony Wood, "for such a worthy scholar." In his retirement, Butler devoted his leisure to study, and was the author of the following works—"Rhetoricæ Libri duo, quorum prior de Tropis et Figuris, posterior de Voce et Gestu præcipit," &c., Oxford, 1600, 16mo; "The Feminine Monarchy; or a Treatise of Bees," Oxford, 1609, 8vo; "De Propinquitate Matrimonium impediente regula generalis," Oxford, 1625, 4to; "Oratoriæ Libri duo," Oxford, 1633, 4to; "English Grammar," Oxford, 1634, 4to; and "The Principles of Musick," London, 1636, 4to. He died in 1647, and was buried in the chancel of the church of which he had been vicar forty-eight years. Butler was evidently a man of great learning and ingenuity; but his English works are disfigured by a peculiar orthography, partly of his own invention, and partly borrowed from the Saxon alphabet. Nevertheless, his "English Grammar" is a work of considerable merit, and has been highly praised by Dr. Johnson. "The Principles of Musick" is a useful and judicious supplement to Morley's Introduction.—E. F. R.
BUTLER, Charles, a distinguished property lawyer and jurist, and polemical writer, was born in London in 1750, and died in 1832. He belonged to a Roman catholic family, and was educated at the English college at Douay. He was the first Roman catholic called to the bar subsequent to the period of the Revolution. This was in 1791, under the act 31 Geo. iii. cap. 32, dispensing with papists taking the oath of supremacy. After the passing of the relief act in 1832, he was made king's counsel during Lord Brougham's chancellorship. His principal law works are—the completion of an edition of Coke on Littleton, of which about one-half had been done by Hargrave, and an edition of Fearne on Contingent Remainders. In general jurisprudence he published "Horæ juridicæ subsecivæ," and "Short Biographical Notices of Chancellors d'Aguesseau and l'Hopital." His "Horæ Biblicæ," is a work of much merit. His general works were collected in five volumes in 1827.—S. H. G.
BUTLER, James, one of the Irish family of Ormonde, who, with his brother, emigrated to Germany in the commencement of the seventeenth century, and entered into the imperial service, where they soon obtained the command of regiments, and served under John de Tscerclai, the Count Tilly, and Wallenstein, in most of the battles of the Thirty Years' war. James Butler was a brave soldier, in the main an honourable man, and faithful to his adopted sovereign, even to an unscrupulous extent. Of this latter quality he gave a memorable proof, in accomplishing the death of the great Wallenstein at the wish of the emperor. Without communicating with his brother Walter, he, in concert with some Scottish officers in the emperor's service, arranged the plot, and finally determined to slay the great general, after disposing of his followers at a banquet to which they were invited. The friends, having got rid of Captain Devereux, with a body of soldiers rushed to the apartment of Wallenstein, Bulter remaining below. The incidents of the tragedy will be found elsewhere, in their proper place. (See Wallenstein.) After the assassination, James hastened to Vienna, where the emperor, Ferdinand II., fastened round his neck a magnificent chain, giving him, at the same time, his blessing and a gold medal, saying—"Wear this, Colonel Butler, in memory of an emperor you have saved from ruin." He was also created a count of the holy Roman empire, and given the golden key of the bedchamber, as well as large estates in Bohemia. He died the following year, 1634, at Wirtemberg, leaving a large bequest to found a college of Irish Franciscans in Prague, which still continues. The family still exists in Bohemia.—J. F. W.
BUTLER, Colonel John, was an emigrant from Connecticut, New England, who settled on land grants of that colony, within the Pennsylvania limit, however, and of which the vale of Wyoming was a part. With no better claim to any record, the massacre of Wyoming has made his name infamous for ever. In July, 1778, with a force 1600 in number, he made a descent upon this beautiful valley, whose four slenderly garrisoned forts, Lackawana, Exeter, Kingston, and Wilkesbarre, could offer but a temporary resistance. Successively they fell before the assault, and for those not happy enough to escape, there was no hope of quarter at the hands of this savage butcher. The genius of Campbell, in whose verse this paradise is made to bloom anew, has gracefully veiled the horrors of that time. For a long period the reproach rested upon the head of the Indian, Brant; how wrongfully, has since been made clear. The poet, who in his first edition of Gertrude fell into the common error, has in later ones been generously earnest to remedy that injustice.—J. P. D.
BUTLER, Joseph, one of the most distinguished of British moralists and theologians, was born at Wantage in Berkshire, on the 18th May, 1692. His father, Thomas Butler, had spent most part of his life as a respectable shopkeeper in this place, and was a presbyterian dissenter. Before the birth of Joseph, who was the youngest of eight sons, he had retired from business, and resided in the neighbourhood. Butler was destined for the ministry among the body of dissenters to which his father belonged, and after receiving the rudiments of his education in the grammar school of his native place, he was transferred to a dissenting academy, first kept at Gloucester, and then at Tewksbury, by a Mr. Jones. It was while a student at Tewksbury that Butler engaged in his remarkable correspondence with Dr. Samuel Clarke. The latter had just published his Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God. This was the very kind of work to stimulate and interest an aspiring theologian like Butler. He had long made it his business, he says, to find such an argument, but without success. He hailed Clarke's attempt, accordingly, but not feeling satisfied with several points in it, he was led to address him on the subject.
Butler's studies at Tewksbury had the effect of unsettling his presbyterian principles. His father became alarmed, and called in the advice and assistance of several clergymen. This, how ever, it may be imagined, was not a likely means of influencing the young inquirer. He remained firm in his intention to conform to the church of England, and at length, with his father's consent, entered as a commoner of Oriel college, Oxford, in March, 1714. At Oxford, Butler formed the friendship of Mr. Edward Talbot, the second son of the bishop of Durham, a friendship to which he was more indebted for his advancement in the church than to any other cause. Little seems to be known of his career at the university. By the year 1717 he must have taken orders, as he is found about this time occasionally supplying the place of his friend Talbot at Hendred, the name of a living held by the latter near Butler's native town. In the following year, 1718, he was appointed preacher at the Rolls, an appointment which he owed to the mutual kind offices of his college friend, and his old correspondent, Dr. Clarke, then rector of St. James'. About this time Butler lost his friend Mr. Talbot. On his deathbed, however, he had commended both Butler and Secker
